IF you didn't have two tin ears you would recognize the difference between "Gee and Haw" (driving commands) and "Hem and Haw" (a communication dysfunction). To assert it is correct to use one of these clichŽd pairings instead of the other--equally well-worn, and equally irrelevant to anything a hand--is the epitome of condescension and presumption on your part, an undue air, a self-centered furbelow, a frippery of ego, a patronizing sniff at the world. For fie. For shame. I rub my forefinger in your direction.

One of my favorite twitter sites is @thereIfixedit and last week she had a photo from NASA with uses of duct tape in space. Old images, moon visits. Working On the Moon.

What's great this week is that NASA knows about her site and they sent her some NEW photos! I think she's entitled to gush a little when she gets a note and some photos from a NASA engineer who enjoys the site and added to it.

Hawk, Hawk, please sit back and fine tune your sense of injustice. You will note my somewhat acerbic comment had a direct antecedent in which yon Bookster wanted to correct a perfectly sound use of English from some imaginary pillar of superiority--much as you often do yourself. Unfortunately this is a premise I find unacceptable, corrosive, and only remediable by a sharp smack on the cybernose.

Perhaps you and Rapaire have four tin ears between you. Speaking of which, the wonderfully resonant phrase "half-wit welkin" is unfortunately an empty one, semantically null. The welkin, you should know, is an archaic phrase for the cosmos, the celestial sphere, the heavens or firmament. It is not usually something one assigns the notion of wittedness to. Even less so, half-wittedness. Perhaps you meant "winkle", a small Atlantic mollusc?

Those appear to be stock photos. They could be "naughty office workers" or "naughty secretaries." Few of those women look like they could find their way around the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress.

I'd be surprised if they could read. Even Shame can spell out M-E-N" and "W-O-M-E-N" and "B-E-E-R" and "P-O-L-I-C-E". Granted, that last one takes a good five or ten minutes for him to figure out and he has to pronounce the letters out loud, but he slowly gets there.

Spring cleaning is starting early, MOM. Let me have those old comforters you've left on the end of the couch for afternoon naps. They haven't been washed in a coon's age. And here's the dustmop, give it a swipe under the furniture. I bet we get enough dirt and organic material to give the compost pile a boost.

Now, the first time I was in grad school the U. library was open 24/7. The circulation librarian on the late shift was running a prostitution ring with some of the undergrads. Truly, she was a "Madame Librarian" (she was also an unemployed and jailed librarian shortly after the U. administration found out).